This invention relates to paintball markers (hereinafter referred to as “markers”) or otherwise known as paintball guns.
The competition of paintball has becoming increasingly popular in recent history. The competition involves at least two participants, each armed with a paintball marker, which fires pellets of “paint” or dye which burst upon striking a solid object to leave a mark at the point of impact. The object of the competition is to strike the other player with a paintball fired from your paintball marker before you are struck with a paintball from the other player. As competition has increased, so has the technology associated with markers.
Currently most markers use a pneumatic system for firing the paintballs using compressed air or other gases. The vast majority of paintball markers now use electronic controls to increase marker performance.
In addition to increases in efficiencies related to the markers, players are also looking to increase the number of paintballs they have available without the need to reload. This has led to a dizzying array of paintball feeding systems or paintball loaders (hereinafter referred to as “loaders”) such as the Halo, Pulse, and VLocity, just to name a few. These loaders allow a participant to greatly increase the number of paintballs available before the need for reloading, which can be a hazardous activity in competition. In analogy to traditional firearms, these loaders have the effect of turning a marker from a revolver into a gun with a magazine. Unlike a traditional magazine, however, these loaders commonly use electronic controls. It is the intersection of the electronic controls found in the markers and the electronic controls found in the loaders, which gave rise to the present invention.
The present invention relates to an improved way to feed paintballs from a loader into a marker. The firing rate of markers has dramatically increased with improvements in technology and currently high-end markers cycle as fast as 30 cycles (or shots) per second (cps). The speed of the markers, however, is limited by the speed at which the loader feeds paintballs into the marker. A variety of methods have been employed to allow “passive” communication between the marker and the loader. These methods include infrared eye, reflective, break-beam, sound and weight sensors; one or more of which are disclosed by Kotsiopoulos in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,305,367; 6,467,473; 6,488,019; 6,609,511; Rice in U.S. Pat. No. 6,941,693; Hslao in U.S. Pat. No. 6,928,999; Christopher in U.S. Pat. No. 6,502,567; Jong in U.S. Pat. No. 6,644,293.
In existing loaders and markers, there is a delay from the time the marker fires to the time the electronic circuit board in the loader acknowledges the need to feed additional paintballs into the marker. Loaders which use break-beam sensors to detect movement of the ball stack in the paintball loading device must first wait for a gap in the stack of balls before the paintball loading devices acknowledges the need to feed additional paintballs. This gap in the stack of paintballs slows down the overall feed-rate of the loader and therefore slows the marker's rate of fire. Loaders which use sound signatures to initiate the loading sequence are limited by the speed at which the sound signature travels from the marker to the loader. Other loaders which use an electric motor to apply constant pressure to the ball stack are hindered by their minimal battery life and tendency to break paintballs.
Because the speed of the loader's reaction to the firing of the marker is a limiting factor to a marker's rate of fire, an improvement in the speed, or communication, between the marker and loader can result in an increase in the marker's overall rate of fire. In view of the foregoing, there is a need to eliminate passive methods of paintball detection and move toward a more active method, which could dramatically increase marker efficiency and rate of fire.